I will always regret not buying a 24” rd special instead of my yoder wichita

Sorry freddie, I feel your pain. Thanks for the help to better educate buyers. We're in the same boat....let's jump ship mate. Scrape the barnicales, give the Yoder a spit shine and sell to fund the Marshall.

I must confess, Yoder has spoke with me on revisions, the first will happen as soon as this weekend that I'll be testing, they have more in the works to test...but they have asked me to hold off on posting anything until we evaluate each revision. So, I will assure you they are working on the issues and are confident on a solution to our issues. I will share it all when it's finished. So please be patient, I know that's a difficult task as I'm a little OCD when it comes to high priced purchases.

What? This was totally out of the blue. A heap of posts by different people complaining about issues and no sign that Yoder was taking the complaints seriously, apart from saying any issues were user error and all of a sudden they have a range of fixes and have selected you to test them? Where did this come from? What makes you special that they are reaching out to you and not the rest of us?

freddie987 wrote:What? This was totally out of the blue. A heap of posts by different people complaining about issues and no sign that Yoder was taking the complaints seriously, apart from saying any issues were user error and all of a sudden they have a range of fixes and have selected you to test them? Where did this come from? What makes you special that they are reaching out to you and not the rest of us?

I did mention that I was going to send all the pictures from Saturday's cook to Yoder Customer service. Well...they replied back and asked for my serial number and to verify my mailing address. I got curious and called them late in the day. Maybe it's because I have a very recent manufacturing date or that I live just 25 miles away or I'm not happy with my recent purchase or maybe none of the above. Changes are in the works, it's posted on the Yoder forums. They want to find a solution for what's already out there as well. I live close enough to just drop the Wichita off for testing it themselves.

I cooked some ribs on Sunday with the heat management plate removed and the ribs on the top grate, and the Wichita is a completely different pit without the plate. I could not get my temperatures below 300F with my usual setup, even on the cold end (350F on the firebox end). I tried different things to get the temperature down to around 225F, but after a short time my ribs started to burn up on the firebox end, so I turned them around and moved them to the lower grate and continued the cook while I fiddled with the fire and dampers. The end result was a pretty lousy batch of ribs, even though the wife said they were good, but I think anything she doesn't have to cook is good in her book.

It's amazing how much air moved through the top of that pit after I removed the heat management plate. I do have a modified door, but I wasn't expecting my temperatures to be so unwieldy. Maybe I should have tried to make a huge coal base first, then I could have closed the intake almost all the way to prevent all that airflow from raising the temperatures.

In reality, I think the absence of the heat management plate allows most of the heat to go straight to the top of the cooker and out of the top-mounted smoke stack, while the lower part of the cooker remains much colder than it normally does with the heat management plate installed because you don't get any of the radiant heat either.

It was an interesting experiment, but I think I'll stick with the heat management plate from now on. When the plate is installed, my temperatures seem to chug along in the 225-250F range without much variance. The only good reason I can see for cooking without it is for the times I really need that extra heat, in which case I would put the food on the top grate. It was just too hot up there for low and slow this time.

freddie987 wrote:What? This was totally out of the blue. A heap of posts by different people complaining about issues and no sign that Yoder was taking the complaints seriously, apart from saying any issues were user error and all of a sudden they have a range of fixes and have selected you to test them? Where did this come from? What makes you special that they are reaching out to you and not the rest of us?

When he said he could travel south to get to Perry, Oklahoma, I figured that put him in Kansas, right around where Yoder is located. I also figured that having a person in one's own backyard, to help evaluate equipment, is a pretty groovy thing for a manufacturer. Since he was in recent communication with them, well.............

I wound up becoming a beta tester for Big Green Egg Corporation some years ago: they sent me all kinds of cool stuff, which I got to keep, and were interested in my observations of the products features. Nice work, if you can get it! I'm not special to anyone except maybe my Mom, but happened to get transferred to an engineer at BGE when I called them for some reason or other. At some point in the conversation he expressed dismay that I was both from Oklahoma, and didn't sound like a (complete) idiot, and asked if I would help them with some products which were still in the design phase.

Figuring the guys at Yoder are at least/most as dumb as the guys in GA, I can see how they hooked with a local boy for some honest customer input from someone who would really like to see things succeed. He's probably special to his mom, too.

As for the RD Special smoker from Horizon, it is so named for "R"oger "D"avidson, the owner of the company, and thankfully, is not a R&D product. We own the 20" RD Special and did not order it with the top shelf option, as our local dealer pointed out that the top shelf on a smoker of this size would be quite narrow. This is the same maroon that told me the 24'" RD Special would just be "way too much smoker for you, and its real, real, heavy." As the quality of our cooks improved, so did the amounts of product we desired to cook at any one time. Man, do I ever wish I'd gotten that 24" cooker. And besides, I'll bet the optional top shelf on that one is up to the job as well.

My smoker is everything you hoped and expected your Yoder would be. Use charcoal. Use wood. Use some of both. Use big splits less often. Use small splits more often. Point it into the wind. Point it away from the wind. Completely ignore the wind. Take the electric fan that Yoder suggested be used to "force" air into the fire box, and point it at yourself instead while you relax with a Swiss Fudge Hot Cocoa Double Espresso Latte....with cream. Build a fire and control the temps with the vents/intakes/exhaust.....just like a real smoker. Slide the deflector plate right. Slide it left. Observe actual changes in the cooking chamber. See air. See air being sucked into the fire box through the unmodified intake vents. See the exhaust. See air/heat/smoke rushing out of (and only out of) the exhaust pipe.

A cursory glance will have both the Yoder and the Horizon appearing to practically being twins, except the Horizon actually works. I only wish we'd gotten the 24' version, so full slabs of spareribs would fit completely perpendicular to the length of the cooker, which would allow for several more slabs. Or beef ribs. Or.......

RogerWilco wrote:My smoker is everything you hoped and expected your Yoder would be. Use charcoal. Use wood. Use some of both. Use big splits less often. Use small splits more often. Point it into the wind. Point it away from the wind. Completely ignore the wind. Take the electric fan that Yoder suggested be used to "force" air into the fire box, and point it at yourself instead while you relax with a Swiss Fudge Hot Cocoa Double Espresso Latte....with cream. Build a fire and control the temps with the vents/intakes/exhaust.....just like a real smoker. Slide the deflector plate right. Slide it left. Observe actual changes in the cooking chamber. See air. See air being sucked into the fire box through the unmodified intake vents. See the exhaust. See air/heat/smoke rushing out of (and only out of) the exhaust pipe.

A cursory glance will have both the Yoder and the Horizon appearing to practically being twins, except the Horizon actually works. I only wish we'd gotten the 24' version, so full slabs of spareribs would fit completely perpendicular to the length of the cooker, which would allow for several more slabs. Or beef ribs. Or.......

That is a refreshing review, and exactly what I had expected to be saying about my Yoder when I ordered it.

I wonder if the wife would notice if I quietly rolled the 30" version into my back yard ...